International Journal of Smart Home Vol. 10, No. 1, (2016), pp. 265-278 http://dx.doi.org/10.14257/ijsh.2016.10.1.24 A Study on the iOS-to-Tizen Smart Game Converter using Resource Converter and Platform Mapping Engine Jaehyun Kim1 and Yangsun Lee1* 1Dept. of of Computer Engineering, Seokyeong University 16-1 Jungneung-Dong, Sungbuk-Gu, Seoul 136-704, KOREA {statsr,yslee}@skuniv.ac.kr, *Corresponding Author Abstract The iOS platform developed by Apple is the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, continually redefining what people can do with a mobile device. Tizen platform developed by Samsung is an open source smart phone platform, which is created for wide range of device. Due to the use of different smart phone platforms, mobile contents developers must create content designed specifically for each platform or use a conversion process to provide game content to consumers. In this paper, to resolve this problem, the iOS-to-Tizen smart game converter was designed to automatically translate game contents from the iOS platform to the Tizen platform for smart phones. Through the iOS-to-Tizen converter, resources such as images and sounds can be converted, APIs can be converted using a platform mapping engine. These and all other content conversion functions were examined. Test results indicate that the graphics, image, sound, and other functions of converted Tizen games were equivalent to those of the iOS games before conversion. pKeywords: iOS-to-Tizen Converter, Automatic Smart Game Converter, iOS, Tizen, Content Analyzer, Resource Converter, Platform Mapping Engine 1. Introduction The iOS platform developed by Apple is the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, continually redefining what people can do with a mobile device [1-3]. Tizen platform developed by Samsung is an open source smart phone platform, which is created for wide range of device [4]. Due to the use of different mobile platforms such as Android, iOS, and Windows Phone for each of the mobile communications companies, mobile contents developers must repeat development process to create different versions of games that match the different characteristics of the different smart phone platforms if they aspire to service their games. This has led to the need for developers to convert contents that have been already developed for use on smart phone platforms. converting (porting and retargeting) Consequently, considerable time and expense are being invested to analyze and convert(port and retarget) the sources and resources of one smart game’s content for use on the smart phone platform[5-17]. In this paper, to resolve this problem, the iOS-to-Tizen automatic smart game converter system was designed to automatically translate game contents from the iOS platform to the Tizen platform for smart phones. The iOS-to-Tizen converter consists of a content analyzer, resource converter, and platform mapping engine. The content analyzer analyzes the content that is input, and produces an output in which the resource data and source code stored within the content are separated. The resource converter is a system which converts the text or binary resource data from the game to be converted into image, sound and user data so that it can be used on the target platform’s file system. The platform mapping engine is a system which provides API functions which allow the * Corresponding Author ISSN: 1975-4094 IJSH Copyright ⓒ 2016 SERSC International Journal of Smart Home Vol. 10, No. 1, (2016) previous platform’s execution environment to be recreated using the target platform’s wrapper functions [7-17]. By automatically converting the existing mobile game contents to the smart phone game contents, the existing game contents can be transplanted quickly to a different platform. As a result, the reusability will be increased, and the labor, time, and cost will be reduced. 2. Related Studies 2.1. iOS The iOS platform developed by Apple is the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, continually redefining what people can do with a mobile device. Together, the iOS SDK and Xcode IDE make it easy for developers to create. Derived from core OS X technologies, the amazing user experience of iOS has been streamlined to take maximum advantage of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch hardware. Technologies shared between iOS and OS X includes the OS X kernel, BSD sockets for networking, and Objective-C and C/C++ compilers for native performance. The iOS delivers a wide-range of graphics capabilities, such as comprehensive 2D drawing, accelerated 3D rendering, and direct access to video playback and capture. Using high-level frameworks, you can create gorgeous animations and transitions within your app’s UI. Figure 1 shows a system configuration of the iOS platform [1-3]. Figure 1. The iOS Platform's System Configuration The iOS platform's bottom layer is the Core OS, which is the foundation of the operating system. It is in charge of memory management, the file system, networking, and other OS tasks, and it interacts directly with the hardware. The Core Frameworks(Services) layer provides an abstraction over the services provided in the Core OS layer. It provides fundamental access to iPhone OS services. The Graphics and Audio(Media) layer provides multimedia services that you can use in your iPhone and iPad applications. The Cocoa Touch layer provides an abstraction layer to expose the various libraries for programming the iPhone and iPad. 2.2. Tizen Tizen platform developed by Samsung is an open source smart phone platform, which is created for wide range of device. To make the Tizen platform smarter, they added exciting features such as multipoint-touch, 3D graphics, an enhanced UI, and support web standards such as HTML5, Java Script, and CSS. Figure 2 depicts the Tizen platform's hierarchical structure and components. 266 Copyright ⓒ 2016 SERSC International Journal of Smart Home Vol. 10, No. 1, (2016) Figure 2. Tizen Platform's System Configuration The Tizen platform consists of a kernel, a native framework, and a web framework. The kernel layer contains the Linux kernel and device drivers. The native framework is composed of system services and a set of native modules across various domains, with which native applications can be developed. The modules include, for example, Base, Application framework, Security, UI, Network, Messaging, Social, Locations, and Web. The framework also provides popular standard open source libraries, such as eglibc, libstdc++, libxml2, OpenGL® ES, OpenAL, and OpenMP® to support efficient application development and the migration of pre-existing applications using such libraries. The Web framework accommodates and leverages most up-to-date Web technologies. It provides a large number of HTML5 functionalities defined by W3C and other standardization groups, such as video, audio, form, 2D canvas, WebGL, CSS3, geolocation, vibration, Web socket, and Web worker. In addition, the framework defines various new device APIs, which enable you to access device functionalities, such as Bluetooth, near field communication (NFC), alarm, and messaging. The device functionalities are provided with a strict rule-based security control system that restricts the malicious use of the device APIs [4]. 2.3. Existing Mobile Game Converters To date, despite the very active mobile market, there has been a lack of research on mobile content converters, so there are few examples to which we can refer. Furthermore, existing content converters generally only allow conversion of content having a similar programming language environment or do not allow automatic conversion at all. The reality is that programmers must convert content by hand. An existing mobile game content converter using XML has attempted to convert Java content [18-21]. In addition, the functions of the API used in the source code to be converted were imitated and redefined using wrapper functions. Therefore, there is no need to convert the source code if the same functions are used. The mutual conversion of BREW C and WIPI C [22] and the conversion GVM C into BREW C [23] have been examined; however, these studies were flawed because the source code was not automatically converted, so users had to intervene and convert it manually. On the other hand, studies of automatic conversion of mobile game content using a compiler writing system [24-25] have been attempted. A method of increasing the reusability of game content and enhancing productivity by converting the mobile C Copyright ⓒ 2016 SERSC 267 International Journal of Smart Home Vol. 10, No. 1, (2016) content of the GVM platform into WIPI C, Java, or MIDP Java has been suggested [5]. In addition, other studies are underway to convert existing mobile game content for use in the growing smart phone market for operating systems such as Android and iOS[6-14], for example, the WIPI-to-iOS converter, WIPI-to-Android converter, GNEX-to-iOS converter, GNEX-to-Android converter, Android-to-iOS converter, and iOS-to- Android converter system. 3. The iOS-to- Tizen Smart Game Converter The iOS-to-Tizen automatic smart game converter receives iOS game contents in source form and converts it into the source form that is run on the Tizen platform. Figure 3 shows a model of the iOS-to-Tizen smart game content automatic converter system. Figure 3. The iOS-to- Tizen Smart Game Converter System For automatic conversion on the source level, first the source code must be converted into source code for the subject platform that executes the same action. Other data such as images and sound must also be converted into a form that can be used on the new target platform. In addition, an API library must be provided in order to maintain equivalent programming and event environments [7-14]. 3.1 Content Analyzer The content analyzer [5-9, 11] is a system that analyzes the input content, and produces an output in which the resource data and source code stored within the content are separated.